Component mounting systems have been known in which multiple mounting machines are arranged in parallel along a transport path of substrates. In such component mounting systems, each mounting machine mounts electronic components such as integrated circuits (ICs) onto substrates while they are transported along the transport path. In such component mounting systems, shortage of components or malfunction (hereinafter collectively referred to as simply “trouble”) which occur in one of the multiple mounting machines and cause an extension of cycle time of the mounting machine may be a bottleneck to reduce an overall throughput of the system.
In order to eliminate such disadvantages, a component mounting system is proposed in, for example, Patent Document 1. In this component mounting system, when a cycle time of a particular mounting machine becomes longer than that of other mounting machines, it is examined whether a component otherwise mounted by this particular mounting machine or an alternative component which can replace the component in question (i.e., a component of the same type as the component in question) can be mounted by another mounting machine(s) (i.e., it is examined whether the component in question is used by another mounting machine) and if it is possible, the component otherwise mounted by the particular mounting machine is alternatively mounted by another mounting machine(s).
However, in such a component mounting system, when the component otherwise mounted by the particular mounting machine (or alternative component) cannot be mounted by another mounting machine, namely when the component in question (or alternative component) is not used in another mounting machine, alternative mounting is not possible, thereby providing no contribution in improvement in a throughput of the system in some cases. Recently, for example, in order to equalize mounting times among mounting machines and improve the process efficiency, optimization of line balance has been sought with using calculation procedures disclosed in Patent Documents 2 and 3. However, in those cases, there may be more components which can be mounted by only one mounting machine among multiple mounting machines (such a component which is mounted on a substrate by only one mounting machine is referred to as “sole mounted component” herein), and therefore the number of the cases may be relatively increased in which the alternative mounting as described in Patent Document 1 may not be feasible.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-267799 (FIG. 7)
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-209681
Patent Document 3: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H8-137828